


Castle in the Air

by immortalflowers



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Creepy Fluff, Deception, Dreams and Nightmares, Gay Little Seonghwa, Ghosts, Horror, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Gore, Modern gothic, Prophetic Dreams, References to Depression, Unspecified Setting, Yearning, Yeosang with long hair, everything is very ambiguous, just tiniest bit of gore, kind of???, the plot holes are supposed to be there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28878381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalflowers/pseuds/immortalflowers
Summary: Kang Yeosang is much like the haunting house he lives in. Dark and brooding, imposing despite his slight build. He doesn’t smile when Seonghwa comes into the room. In fact, he doesn’t look at him at all, but sits crouched down on the polished hardwood floor—all open spaces, large windows, several floor-to-ceiling windows, and so, so, so much light. It catches Yeosang’s long hair, tied back with a neat black ribbon. Seonghwa entertains the thought of plaiting it for him, the thought of playing with his hair—is it as soft as it looks?—before closing his eyes, breathing deeply, shakily out.or: Plagued by vivid night terrors since he was a child, Park Seonghwa tries to live his life as normal as can be. Until he applies for a job in a mansion in the middle of nowhere where everything is ostensibly regular, except nothing is what it seems to be.
Relationships: Kang Yeosang/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 8
Kudos: 38





	Castle in the Air

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sangiebyheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangiebyheart/gifts).



> This is super late for your birthday (sorry!), but it felt right to gift my first seongsang to you, Pita!!! I hope you like it <3 
> 
> The title comes from Bram Stoker's Dracula: "I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air."
> 
> as always, all comments and kudos are welcome! <3
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/yoongsicle)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/immortalflowers)  
> 

A castle. A cliff. A boy.

Seonghwa can’t hear the yelling because of the wind. It’s so strong—whipping back and forth, about to upend the entire ocean on their back. Wipe them clean. And as if the strong call of sea to its lover, the land, is not enough, the oncoming thunderstorm that was a mere line on the horizon spreads itself impossibly wider, coming to eat them alive.

“There’s nothing left!” the boy cries, his silver hair falling in rivulets around his face, like a diamond waterfall. 

Seonghwa only watches from his place on the hill, the castle a dark backdrop to their anguish. If he concentrates hard enough, he can almost see it shimmering under the moonlight as if rain is suspended around it in mid-air.

Before that is gone too, and only the two of them remain on the cliff. The boy—emotional, crying, angry, and beautiful. Seonghwa—static, motionless, quiescent, and lifeless.

* * *

“Mr. Park, are you with me?” the housemaid asks with a wide smile. Seonghwa has met her once before when he had first answered the newspaper ad—thinking she was the one in need of a Governer—and it’s still the only thing that’s stayed with him. That kind smile, all lovingly bunched up cheeks, crow-feet at the edges of her eyes. Motherly and sweet.

“Yes, of course,” Seonghwa answers, shaking himself from the nightmare-induced stupor. He gets like that sometimes, slow and unresponsive. Being plagued by similar nightmares since he was only a child and now, twenty years later, he still hasn’t learned how to deal with them. Perhaps he just wants to be hugged and cradled; kissed on the forehead to make all his night terrors disappear.

He’s done many things to stop them; going sleepless has never helped before, he should know better by now. It would only make the oncoming dreams more pronounced, more vivid, and lifelike; like he was picked by his shirt and placed into a new life by a divine hand.

“You asked about the boy… Well, truth be told, he’s not a young boy anymore, uh,” she grabs the front of her skirts in both hands and starts climbing up the steep hill, “He came of age this year, I believe. So just don’t call yourself a Governer when he’s around. I believe _tutor_ will suffice,” she laughs quietly. 

And the house is not quite _a house_. The closer they come to it, the bigger it becomes. Like it’s swelling with importance. It’s unlike anything Seonghwa has ever seen—tall, dark, and imposing. It stretches over enough land to perhaps be called a mansion with its accompanying _jardin à la française_ , though it looks more like a small gothic castle. Seonghwa rather expects to see crypts and coffins, but he finds that he likes the peculiar mash of styles. 

Three towers are twisting upwards behind a slanted roof as far as he can see, all adorned with colorful lancet windows and wrought-iron balconies. Before the towers end in spires, there is a series of machicolations fixed onto them, making a full circle. The vines and rose bushes climb everything, a little too perfectly placed to be anything but artificial, _nouveau gothic._

He shakes his head again, “Yes, of course. I will help however I can. That’s why I’m here, after all.”

The stairs start three quarters up the hill the house is sitting on, winding straight up to the tall, dark oak doors. Iron roses climb them like real vines, the middle adorned with a three-strand plait, shimmering rose gold in the midday sun. A black deer head lays in the middle of it all, the horns intricate and symmetric; an antique knocker.

The maid forgoes the knocker to push the right half of the doors open. They give easily under her fingers, unfolding with a great whine like they haven’t been used in some time. Seonghwa steels himself against the shudder when the piercing sound makes him grind his teeth together.

The room they step into is no less surprising than the rest of the house. A huge open space with grand stairs in the middle. From what he can see, the lancet windows there are all blinding currant and pine-green and violet. There’s a small round table in the middle of the anteroom, a crocheted white tablecloth under a vase filled with what used to be rich red roses that have turned a splotchy yellow and dark-red, almost black with the passage of time. 

“Is Mrs. Kang not here? I assumed I would meet her today, I’ve only spoken to her a few times…” Seonghwa stammers, catching wind of the lilting music, the sound of steps hitting the polished floor; a silhouette of a dancer twirling, moving with purpose painted on the floor of the open room like Plato’s cave allegory.

"Oh, no," the maid huffs on an awkward laugh. The kind of sound that makes you wonder if a person is hiding something from you. Seonghwa looks away from the moving body to stare at her questioningly. "She doesn't come here, you know? Master Yeosang lives alone."

Alone in this terrible, old house? How lonely he must've been, Seonghwa thinks. How alone and longing it must've felt. "But... he’s only 20?"

She nods sagely, "He moved here at the beginning of the year. His father left him the house after he had died when Yeosang was just a child." She looks like she wants to add more to the story, but changes her mind at the last moment, biting her tongue.

"Oh," Seonghwa gasps, "That's quite unfortunate."

"Save all your sympathy for the boy," she chuckles, tapping his shoulder good-naturedly. "You'll need it."

Seonghwa spares her a sideways glance. This isn't where he thought he would be this summer, his plans ranged from lake to beach houses. But the offered pay was too good, and he has debts to pay. He's wrangled his fair-share of traumatized children, a lonely 20-year old shouldn't be much trouble, he might even have time to get some of his reading done for next semester while staying.

It will be fine, he thinks; the sky outside this dark mausoleum of memories darkening with the promise of heavy rain and loud thunder that will later give him trouble sleeping.

“Shall we go see Master Yeosang?” she asks. “You can leave the bags here, we’ll pick it up on the way to your room.” 

“Yes,” he smiles, setting the ripple effect of his dreams into motion. “Let’s go.”

Kang Yeosang is much like the haunting house he lives in. Dark and brooding, imposing despite his slight build. He doesn’t smile when Seonghwa comes into the room. In fact, he doesn’t look at him at all, but sits crouched down on the polished hardwood floor—all open spaces, large windows, several floor-to-ceiling windows, and so, so, so much light. It catches Yeosang’s long hair, tied back with a neat black ribbon. Seonghwa entertains the thought of plaiting it for him, the thought of playing with his hair—is it as soft as it looks?—before closing his eyes, breathing deeply, shakily out.

“Hi, Yeosang,” Seonghwa says in the voice he uses for children throwing a tantrum; a little cautious, a lot calming. “My name is Park Seonghwa, I’m here to help you with your summer school classes. I was employed by—”

“My mother. I know,” Yeosang cuts in, his voice a stab wound, a punch in the gut. “I know every— _thing_ about you, Park Seonghwa. I know where you live, and I know where you go to school. I know where your family lives, and that your baby sister is in the hospital. I know who you were in a relationship with. In fact, I even know who you fu—”

“Enough!” Seonghwa yells, his patience getting the best of him. He recoils at his outburst, slapping a hand over his mouth in horror. He didn’t have many expectations for his job, but he never expected this. Whatever _this_ is. 

The maid looks calculatingly from Yeosang to Seonghwa and, deciding she wants nothing to do with this catastrophic first meeting, she pulls away and leaves the room. Yeosang doesn’t spare her a glance, so the staff must be used to it already.

He turns to look at Seonghwa and something close to a real smile (or what Seonghwa would categorize as one) breaks free over Yeosang’s face, “Well, well, well, I might just have to keep you, Mr. Park.”

Seonghwa fumbles with his words, by now probably cherry red in the cheeks, like a goddamn Cherubin. “I am _not_ an object to be kept,” is what he settles on, all heated and close to committing an atrocious act of impoliteness.

Yeosang ignores him completely in favor of picking up the bandages he unwound from his ankle and clumsily climbing to his feet. “Let’s not pretend, Mr. Park. I know you’re here to be my glorified babysitter, and truth be told, I’m pretty sure you’re not as smart as I am, so there’s no point in your tutoring me. And you probably need money considering your family background, so, let’s just keep out of each other’s hair, okay? But I must say,” he halts, “Mother hasn’t yet sent me a _tutor_ that was quite as pretty as you are, so this might just end up not so boring for the two of us.”

Seonghwa can’t imagine he’s making a pretty sight right now, with mouth opening and closing unintelligently, blushing up to his roots, all thoughts escaping his mind in a heady rush that’s making him every part the idiot Yeosang obviously considers him to be. 

“That—that’s—” Seonghwa gulps, at a loss for words. 

Yeosang limps around him, pausing in the open doorway, “Your room is up the stairs; left hallway, last room to the right. Opposite you is the bathroom should you need it. And I’m sure everything else you will be fine finding on your own.”

Seonghwa nods uncertainly, still taken aback by Yeosang’s blunt personality and being caught out as—as Yeosang had said—a glorified babysitter. 

He stays alone in what he realizes is the ballroom for another five minutes, just standing there, unmoving, until the maid finds him again, and shows him to his rooms.

He can’t shake the look on Yeosang’s face when he said, _I know everything about you, Mr. Park._ from his mind. He wishes he had never even seen it.

* * *

Seonghwa walks down the hallway, drenched in sweat and tears and something else more viscous, sticky, branding. It latches onto his skin, sticks his white undershirt to his body, doesn’t let him breathe. Will he even be able to wash it from underneath his short, clipped nails? 

He doesn’t want to look down at himself, afraid of whatever his body is hiding. Sometimes not knowing is better. Sometimes you need to actively choose to ignore things to keep sane.

His hand, acting of its own volition, grabs his shirt with pointer finger and thumb. The unsticking of cloth makes a wet, disgusting sound. His fingers come away stained red like rubies. He is distinctly aware that his footsteps are making loud thumping noises. He doesn’t know where he’s going. Has he passed this hallway once already?

Panic grips his chest like a snake winding tightly around him, constricting his breaths into little gasping sounds. He’s panting, he realizes, and the breaths are fogging up in the cold.

It’s summer. The open window at the end of the hallway attests to it; the white sheer curtain moves in the soft, warm breeze, the sun is a blazing ball of fire in the sky and yet, the night is the darkest he’s ever seen.

Seonghwa is very, very afraid; he quickens his steps.

He stops once he reaches the end of the hallway. The house didn’t look like this in the morning—now, there are no winding staircases, no dried flowers or boys with long silver hair like ancient fae; and the hallway ends in a shut door. It’s ornamental and beautiful, much like everything else in this house. There are stained glass windows on each side of him, the light hitting them from the outside shows him the way to go. _Onwards, my dear, there is no stopping now. Finish what you have started_ , it tells him.

Seonghwa opens the door.

* * *

The first few days he wanders around the castle alone. All the rooms follow a kind of modern gothic style—dark wallpaper that ranges from grey to black and red; pendulous chandeliers tinkling with an ever-present breeze, and floor to ceiling windows that look a billion times more beautiful when looked at from the inside. Each has a new, intricate design and tells its own story. He finds the one on the upper floor between the east and west wing the most beautiful, depicting a rose garden in full bloom. If he passes by it at noon, the red, orange, and green of it coloring his clothes vermillion, his hands looking like they’re covered in sheer slasher movie blood.

“It took me a long time to get used to it,” someone says from the bottom of the staircase. Seonghwa looks down to see a pretty girl. Her hair is so black it looks depthless, cropped short down to her shoulders. She’s wearing overalls and dirty boots, her face smudged with dirt. She takes her dirty gloves off and offers Seonghwa a hand.

“Soyeon,” she introduces herself.

Seonghwa takes the offered hand only to feel it calloused and rough, a worker’s hands. “I’m Seonghwa, the new… Err,” he stammers.

“Whatever, right?” she laughs. Her voice is high, and her laugh a tinkling sound like snowdrops in the spring breeze. “Were you looking for something or just admiring the mansion?”

“Oh, I was actually about to look for Yeosang, I’d hate to have Mrs. Kang admonish me for not doing my job properly,” Seonghwa admits quietly, wringing his hands together. He’s lost the plot of what his job is supposed to entail. He’s not angry with Yeosang’s mother, after all, he never asked to know more about her son, only assumed he would find a shy kid with self-esteem issues at best. What he found was… Well, he’s not even sure yet himself.

“He’s just… like that sometimes,” she gestures idly with her hand. “He’ll warm up to you… Or you’ll get used to it,” she shrugs.

“Whichever comes first, right?” Seonghwa asks, already defeated. 

It’s fine. He can spend two months here, take the cash, and go. It beats flipping burgers for minimum wage for two months, only to have most of his pay docked off for virtually no reason at all. Even though Yeosang reminds him of all those entitled rich boys he’s come in contact with working all those part-time jobs, he’ll just follow his advice. Keep out of each other’s hair for the next sixty days. He can do that.

“Oh,” Soyeon pauses, “today’s Wednesday, right?” She barrels on before Seonghwa can even get a word in edgewise, “Yeosang should be outside. In the fancy garden behind the castle. If you _were_ looking for him, that is.”

“What is he doing outside? And why does it matter what day it is…” Seonghwa ponders out loud.

“Go check out for yourself, pretty boy,” she winks. “I’m late. My girlfriend’s gonna fucking kill me.” With that, she disappears in little more than swear words and the clinging smell of fresh dirt.

Seonghwa attempts to navigate the mansion, he really does, but each corridor looks almost the same, each door perfectly aligned with the other; until he finally ends up in the kitchen where no creepy portraits or grandfather clocks are scaring the shit out of him every fifteen minutes. The window there gives him a perfect view of the park in the backyard, and along with it of Yeosang and several scraggly mutts he’s leading on leashes. 

He opens the door to hear shrieking laughter that his mind only later confirms to be Yeosang’s. He’s running around the open plain of emerald green grass, the color of it attests to being cared meticulously for every day. The color of money and born-into chances. He’s being chased by the dogs, yapping excitedly at his naked feet. Yeosang’s pants rolled up to show tantalizing ankle and pale skin, his white shirt half unbuttoned flying behind him in the wind. 

Seonghwa stares in half-curiosity, half-shame, lowering himself on the steps he just climbed down from. In front of him stretches the garden—lush and colorful in all its summer glory, the flowers placed in perfect, symmetrical rows glinting like gems. 

On the other side—Yeosang.

Seonghwa can’t ignore his heart thumping harder against his ribcage, about to break through flesh and bone, bringing all his darkest fears and truths to light. He sighs, and in that sigh lays his answer to a question never asked, a question he dares not manifest in his thoughts.

“Seonghwa!” he hears Yeosang call and it’s as unexpected as it is deeply wanted. “Come meet my friends.”

Seonghwa doesn’t even have the time to stand up before the first dog barrels into him at full speed. Wet, dirty paws grapple for purchase on his chest until Yeosang whistles to get him down, and Seonghwa kneels in the perpetually wet grass, letting the dog sniff his hand and nudge him to scratch him behind the ears. 

“I didn’t know you had dogs,” Seonghwa says, not looking up at Yeosang who is only a shadow cast by the sun across half of Seonghwa’s vision. The dog settles down next to him, something that looks like a mix of mistreated and learning-to-trust-again that makes Seonghwa more aware of Yeosang than he should be in this situation that warrants no thoughts of him but the one accounting for his physical presence.

“I don’t. They’re from a local shelter I volunteer at once a week when I don’t have classes,” Yeosang explains, and Seonghwa _ahhs_ in understanding. “Would you like to go for a walk with us? I usually bring them here because they don’t have enough space to run in the enclosure. Even if they take them out for walks every day, it’s the least I can do.”

Seonghwa notices the sentence hanging by a thread, leaving something unsaid even if Yeosang’s tongue is loose and happily sharing all these little secrets and pieces of himself that Seonghwa is holding his hands out for, saving them together in a compartment in his mind, one that says ‘ _Do Not Forget_ ’.

“Of course, let’s go,” Seonghwa smiles, thoughts of timetables and interventions and ways to help melting into background noise. 

“Should we go down to the beach,” Yeosang says and it’s not really for him, but the dogs wagging their tails in excitement, already tugging on their leashes. 

Yeosang takes them down a winding path behind both the house and its garden, a loop that brings them diagonally in front of the house that only looks like a child’s toy from this distance. Seonghwa shudders, the thought bringing some old memory to the forefront of his mind.

He’s not sure where they stand now and what is the nature of their relationship. Seonghwa doesn’t mind a few scathing words because there’s no shame in being aggressively sad, after all, Seonghwa would know. But it just doesn’t feel right, receiving money for doing absolutely nothing.

They don’t talk much on their walk, Yeosang walks in front of him most of the time, never shoulder-to-shoulder. Seonghwa could very well attribute that to the rowdy dogs begging to be let off their leashes to run around the sandy beach, but something is telling him there’s more to it. 

“Can I ask you something?” Seonghwa braves the truth. Or Yeosang’s version of it at least.

Yeosang turns around once he unbuckles the last leash, raising his eyebrows in question. The dog stays right next to him, and Yeosang sits down on the hot sand. Seonghwa joins him.

“What—What am I doing here?” he asks, burying his hands in the sand until he reaches the one underneath, blissfully cold, and curls his hands in it. “Be honest with me, because I’m confused… This isn’t what I expected.”

“It never is, is it?” Yeosang sighs. “Look, just… Can’t you just stay here without asking questions? You’re getting paid for doing nothing,” he laughs lightly with the summer breeze, it ruffles the pieces of his hair around his face that have fallen out of the low ponytail. 

“It feels wrong,” Seonghwa confesses. There’s a thin line between being _a tutor_ (or whatever, really) and whoring himself out. He doesn’t want to cross it, he’s not yet that desperate.

“Just stay here for the next two months, take your money, and go. I don’t need anything from you… but I don’t mind you being here,” he smirks. 

Seonghwa looks away, the sea azure and large; stretching out as far as he can see. There is some truth that he asked for in Yeosang’s answer, but most of it is still hidden behind a veil of something dark and surreptitious. He won’t pry, he tells himself.

In the end, one word rings true from his very first thoughts about Yeosang— _lonely_. 

He is so goddamn lonely.

* * *

Seonghwa’s world is tilting. First to the left and then to the right. There is the gentle motion of gliding, the sun overhead hiding stardust and secrets that are better left alone. He moves the book covering his eyes away, only to find himself in a boat. In front of him sits Yeosang.

He’s reclining in a similar fashion to Seonghwa, except that he’s motionless and Seonghwa reaches out with his hand. He is finally allowed to touch. He wishes to commit the planes of Yeosang’s face to memory—his nose bridge, the shape of his brow, the way his eyelashes curl when his eyes are closed, his soft, pillowy mouth. 

He makes a face, not unlike an angry kitten, when Seonghwa touches his fingers to his jaw, brushes pieces of the hair that have fallen onto his forehead away with a gentle touch. 

He’s allowed, he’s allowed, he’s alive. Yeosang opens his eyes in a flash.

He doesn’t flinch back, he doesn’t protest; he takes Seonghwa’s hand, the one that was tracing secrets on his face, and places two fingers between his teeth. Seonghwa flinches back, but Yeosang holds him steady. Holds eye contact as he starts sucking and licking over Seonghwa’s fingers. There is no time for words or blushing or anything of the sort because Yeosang pulls him in and Seonghwa falls falls falls.

They’re like two wild animals finally let out of their cages; tearing and eating and hungry for blood and flesh. Seonghwa watches in wonder as Yeosang’s teeth elongate; each and every one ending in needle-sharp points. He wants to take a step back but the boat protests, leaning heavily to one side, about to tip over. Yeosang only stares, starving like a wolf, before biting down on the meaty part of Seonghwa’s shoulder. He cries out, trying to wrench away, they fall into the water; the coldness breaking them apart.

He must look like a drop of red paint in a clear cup right now, he thinks, he must be dissipating, filling the empty spaces between molecules. Falling falling falling.

There is one last thought when he reaches the seafloor, but he loses the thread of sentences. He tries to look through the murky, greenish water, but where once was Yeosang, only a creature remains; black talons long and imposing, mouth filled with razor-sharp fangs.

Two words bubble to the surface, _Monster_ , and then, _Run_.

* * *

There is something about Yeosang, Seonghwa decides, that makes him want to pull all his hair out or just stare at him lovingly, dumbly, starstruck like he’s putting logs on a bonfire and watching it grow and grow and grow until it swallows him whole.

“I told you you won’t understand a thing I’m studying,” Yeosang grumbles around a mint candy in the shape of a marquise, a sharp little teardrop. 

“Doesn’t mean I can’t help,” Seonghwa sighs. He watched him make tea for them, Soyeon nowhere to be found, but likely tending to her flowers or the vegetable patch, or smoking on one of the numerous balconies. The lines of his waist and naked wrists (a pale blue silk blouse opened to show a good portion of throat and the sleeves rolled up in an approximation of Seonghwa’s heart attack) painting a lovely, domestic picture.

It’s only been two weeks, Seonghwa, how are you already attached? 

He tells himself he’s not though. He tells himself his interest is solely aesthetic in nature; Yeosang is pretty, who wouldn’t like him? Who wouldn’t think about kissing the high of his cheekbone in the early afternoon light? Who wouldn’t think about touching their fingers to the crown of his head, letting it pass through the meticulously brushed silvery locks, while those dark, pitless eyes are staring at him in question, in answer, in challenge, baring his throat like limitless temptation.

Yeosang snorts, “Yeah? Like how?” Whatever Seonghwa does for him is never good enough. Seonghwa was taught not to give unsolicited advice, but to help people find their own solutions through means he could provide. But he’s never worked with another person that was so fucking headstrong like Yeosang is. He wants to go to magical colleges and universities that admit only the best, and yet he doesn’t see the fantasy he has created. But if that is his only way of escape, who is Seonghwa to break the illusion?

“Your time management sucks,” Seonghwa tells him without much preamble, “you need to make a daily plan, and you need to stick to it.”

“Like that would help,” he rolls his eyes. Crossing his arms over his chest, the shirt unveils even more skin. All creamy like toffee, unblemished, and seeking to hold Seonghwa’s mark. 

“I might not be smart like you are, but you won’t get anywhere close to your desired schools and education if you just stab around in the dark, and teach yourself everything and anything that catches your fancy,” Seonghwa argues. “I know you think I’m only here to—I don’t know—see that you don’t hurt yourself or whatever your mind has conjured about me. You know everything about me and you must know I can help you, so use me while I’m here.”

Yeosang’s eyebrows quirk in interest, and just as Seonghwa thinks he’s got through to him, Yeosang leaves the room with a look that says not to follow him, not to look for him. With a look that says, _My heart is encased in stone walls and hidden behind impenetrable locked doors, I will not show it to you_.

Seonghwa sighs, drinking his lukewarm tea. Now, if only he had the key.

On the fourth day of being ignored, Seonghwa corners Yeosang in the library (he thinks it might even just be Yeosang's unofficial bedroom, the couch well slept-in and the pillows in a perpetual motion of disarray). 

"I just want to talk," Seonghwa placates when he sees Yeosang rising up from the chair he was sitting in. He doesn't sit back, but at least he stays in the room. Seonghwa counts that as a win. 

"If nothing else changes," he looks pointedly at Yeosang, who is looking resolutely anywhere but at Seonghwa, browsing the books he must already all know by heart. "We'll be stuck together until the summer passes and I must return to the city to finish my schooling. I'd rather be civil with you while I'm here, ignoring me won't help much to either of us." And he wants so desperately to help, to be of use ( _Use me while I'm here_ , he shudders), to give any and all comfort he can to a stranger he's known for all of two weeks now.

But relationships are strange like that—they are two-way streets, you see each other in passing, hug when you come close enough to touch. The second they become less than that, you find yourself stuck at the end of a one-way street, alone, with no way to go back or forward.

Seonghwa wishes he had less empathy to give. He wouldn't even be here then; he would let his sister suffer in the abysmal hospital care or careless doctors and nurses who only know how to shut their patients up and fill them full of pills. Out of sight out of mind.

"As I said, I don't need _help_ ," he says the word with so much malice, Seonghwa can almost see the venom dripping from his pointed teeth. 

"Okay, so I won't help you if that's what you wish. Let's at least be civil, what else are we going to do all alone in this castle?" he says the words without thinking, without realizing Yeosang has spent most of his last year here. 

"Okay," Yeosang says, just like that. Like he weighed his options, and Seonghwa was a safe bet to get him out of here. "Here," he pulls a book from one of the shelves and thrusts it in Seonghwa's hands without another word.

He looks down at the cover—The Little Prince it says, and he can't help but laugh. "Why this one?"

"It sounds exactly like the bullshit you spout," Yeosang says, disinterested, already turning another page of a thick volume Seonghwa can't see the title of from where he's sitting on the window seat.

They sit in silence for some time, but Seonghwa finds that sitting in a room with Yeosang is not the same as sitting with just anybody else. He permeates the whole room like a swelling balloon just by breathing. He's like a marvelously painted portrait in a gallery, it feels like wherever he moves Yeosang's eyes follow, though he never moves them from the words on the page.

"Have you ever seen a ghost here?" Seonghwa feels compelled to ask.

"Only myself," Yeosang says.

He can't choose if he's fucking with him or telling the truth, so he huffs a little laugh, turns to the next page.

_It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears._

* * *

Seonghwa isn't afraid of ghosts and ghost stories, he's more afraid of what's within or without. Within oneself, there lies a well, and it is always a well, and it is as deep as one's desire. Seonghwa finds that his well is bottomless.

Without is all that's escaped the well, and right now, those are the actions he takes—creeping up the winding staircase to reach the spire balcony, to see for himself whatever it is that Yeosang sees in the darkness surrounding them forever—and those are the words he speaks.

"Ah," Yeosang sighs, "you found me."

"You are not that hard to find," he lies. He walked through the east wing, and he walked through the south wing until he came by the kitchen to find the door to the tower slightly ajar. It was pure luck or misfortune. He cannot decide, he'll let fate decide for him.

"I meant what I said, you know? That first day we met," he murmurs. He seems to be fighting off a smirk, and the darkness makes her descent, prostrating herself like a veil over his shoulders. Snugly up to his neck like he's a child being put into bed. Kiss me on the forehead, he wants to scream. Touch me just once so that I know I'm not going fucking insane.

"Okay," Seonghwa answers. But he doesn't know what he's confirming. Maybe his death sentence. "What happened to your leg, Yeosang?"

He sucks in a sharp breath, dropping little stones he picked up from the roof tile that's rapidly deteriorating and falling all over them like black rain, through the holes in machicolations. "I fell."

"You fell?" Seonghwa prompts, sitting down next to Yeosang. Close enough that their shoulders brush whenever Yeosang leans to throw stones over the edge of the railing, and far enough that Seonghwa's heart stops every fucking time he does it. 

"I was dancing, I fell, it happens," he says harshly. _Tutto finito_.

"But not to you?" Seonghwa gives the story another ending. He's not pushing, he tells himself, he's giving him a chance to atone.

"Let's trade," Yeosang suddenly says. It's like the cold doesn't bother him at all, sitting with his legs thrown over the railing like that, the pant leg of his pajamas uncovering a marred ankle, and further up a calf. Seonghwa looks away and into the distance. There is nothing but woods for kilometers on end, on this side. They stick out in a wide array of leaves and naked tree branches shaped like monster claws if he stares hard enough. 

"Trade what?" asks Seonghwa, as clearly as he can with his still teeth chattering. He's never suffered this much from cold weather. And it's not even that cold, it's just the wind that's picking up, swaying the trees in the distance like puppets on a string.

"Secrets of course," he answers, looking at Seonghwa from under his lashes. They're so black they remind him of spindly spider legs when he looks at him like this. Like they're playing a game and Yeosang is determined to win.

"My father died," Yeosang says. And it's on a sigh, unbothered. Clean-cut like it doesn't hurt at all.

"It's not really a secret if I already knew about it," Seonghwa admonishes. And then wants to hit himself for even entertaining Yeosang's mind games. Again and again, he has to remind himself that he's not here to make friends but to see how he can help the kid. And then his treacherous mind says, _But he's not really a kid is he?_ and _That's not really your job description, anyway_.

"The secret is," Yeosang looks away, "that I killed him." It's breathed into the air, words melting like spun sugar or dragon beard candy under your tongue.

"Why do you say that? You know it's not true," Seonghwa says, speaking softly as if to a spooked animal. He doesn't want Yeosang to run away from him again. He wants to know more about him. Wants to help.

"It's what Mother says anyhow," he mumbles, sticking a mint into his mouth. Seonghwa can almost hear the candy rattling over his teeth and under his tongue. It sounds much like his heart breaking.

A sigh, "I'm sorry she said that, but I don't think she truly means it."

Yeosang laughs and it's terrible and wet, and nothing Seonghwa has ever wanted to hear come from Yeosang's mouth. He throws his head back, his long silver hair making way for smooth skin and sharp lines of nose and cheekbone and jaw. Seonghwa wants. There is something ugly in him that's saying he should touch in form of comfort, but he very well knows it would only be his own.

"Don't," Yeosang snaps his mouth shut, the hair coming back in place to hide that little scar on his temple, to cover half of his face so that Seonghwa doesn't know what he's thinking about. Can't read it on his face. "Don't say things you don't know are true. You don't have to lie for my benefit, I wouldn't want you to sin."

Seonghwa doesn't tell him it's for Yeosang's benefit as much for his own. 

"If you say so," he yawns. "Are you ready to get back—" but he has no time to finish because Yeosang is slotting their mouths together and pulling him in by his bathrobe, tilting him dangerously close to the edge (of the balcony; of his sanity). 

Seonghwa wants to fight it. This rising attraction, the twisting braid their souls have made pulling at each other incessantly. But it's like telling the rain to stop falling. Telling the sea at their back to lower the tide so that his heart doesn't get lost in the open waters; it has no anchor, nothing to hold it down.

He gasps and Yeosang takes that as the permission to slip his tongue between his lips, tasting the roof of his mouth and passing it sinfully slow over his teeth, and Seonghwa can't help himself but give as good as he gets. Rules of conduct be damned. They're all made up anyway, he reasons and takes Yeosangs face in his hands. Cradling his cheeks delicately like he's keeping a fire from going out in the wind. The skin is as soft as he imagined, and his hair even softer when he cards his fingers through the length.

And the monster stabs its claws into Seonghwa’s chest, deep enough to pierce his heart. 

“I never asked for your help Seonghwa,” Yeosang murmurs, disconnecting their lips, still breathing the same air, reaching into his ribcage, ripping him open. Perhaps he will climb into the space he makes. Perhaps they will live as one. “I don’t need it, I don’t want it—”

“And yet I offer it anyway,” Seonghwa smiles softly, letting Yeosang lean his forehead onto his shoulder. He brings both his legs up, pulling Yeosang closer to himself, winding his arms around him in an approximation of a hug.

Yeosang sighs, his hair spilling around him like a halo of an avenging angel. Seonghwa can’t keep his hands to himself anymore; he touches. Fingers gliding through shiny, smooth hair, reaching behind him to splay themselves treacherously over the small of his back, feeling every vertebrae and rib; feeling the rush of blood under the skin stretched so thin over bones. 

“You are not listening,” Yeosang raises his voice, finally looking up. Moving away from Seonghwa’s embrace, locking his own hands around himself. Seonghwa looks at him questioningly.

“I don’t want your help, I want _you_ ,” he breathes out, and the words shatter around them like they were a stacked house of glass cards. 

Seonghwa shivers and surges and grabs. Says, “Oh.” Gasps into Yeosang’s mouth, breathing for them both. “ _Oh_.”

It is clear as day now, that a divine hand has grabbed him by the skin of his neck again, like a mother cat its angry kitten by the scruff, and put him in place. On the right path, just where he needs to be.

He gasps again and again and again, and this summer air that had once made him cold lits his bones on fire in a second of touches going south. “We shouldn’t,” Seonghwa mumbles through his teeth, his mouth swollen with kisses, but he doesn’t do anything to push Yeosang away. On the contrary, he pulls his leg up, bends it, brings their groins together.

“Oh,” Yeosang moans, he’s cherry red under the moonlight, eyes curved in the image of her sisters, all lovely and sweet, “but we should.” With these words, he pushes Seonghwa onto his back, climbs into his lap like only he has the right to it. 

“I told you we were going to have fun. You and I,” he whispers into Seonghwa’s ear, and Seonghwa suppresses a shiver of anticipation. He’d like to see those sharp teeth at work, that wicked tongue ruining him for forever. For all eternity.

If he must fall, Seonghwa thinks, let it be this. Let it be Yeosang making himself a home between his legs; let him be ruined by the hands of the creator; let him whisper expletives into the night air as Yeosang strokes him to completion. His last breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a name. _The name_.

Yeosang smiles smugly, makes Seonghwa pull him back to his feet when they’re being chased away by the promised rain. There was a time when Seonghwa would stay outside in the rain because it is the only chance lonely people have to be touched, but now, he only tucks Yeosang’s head into the crook of his neck, takes his hand, and twines their fingers together. Helps him down the spiral staircase and into the welcoming warmth of the kitchen.

They forgo the tea to shuffle together into Yeosang’s bedroom, and later bed. They forgo it so that Seonghwa can return the favor; can taste himself on Yeosang’s lips, licking greedily over his tongue. Pressing his fingers into the contours his collarbones make, staking his mark where the shirts won’t cover.

Being used, just as he asked.

* * *

Weeks pass in this gentle push and pull, Yeosang mostly does the former.

They clash like oil and water, infinitely speaking different languages, living in their own worlds. Yeosang’s filled with solitude and deep-seated loneliness that at times makes him into something monstrous; something with fangs, and talons for fingers. The worst thing is—he wants it. Wants to be gripped and left gasping for breath, even if it takes everything in him to admit it.

“I know you think it,” Soyeon starts, placing a cup of coffee on the table next to all his open textbooks and papers, “but Yeosang is not all that bad. He’s rough around the edges, sure, but he’s sweet once you get to know him better,” she says in a twisted _déjà vu_ , smiling this particularly beatific smile whenever she speaks of him. Seonghwa wonders if everyone in the castle is under some kind of spell, and he’s the only one that can think straight.

There’s nothing sweet about the boy he met, except maybe his smile once it loses that grating edge it gets sometimes when Seonghwa knows he’s being made fun of. He keeps his thoughts private, he is only another employee in a sea of many.

“Thank you,” he says, cradling the cup close to his mouth, it leaves a caramel ring on the table where it had sloshed over the edge. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, and I understand that there’s a process we have to go through for him to trust me enough to help, but sometimes it’s all so tiring,” he sighs. The coffee burns the roof of his mouth but he swallows without complaint.

“There, there,” she pats his arm, and it’s as mocking as it is comforting. “I’m sure he’ll warm up to you and then you can kiss and hold hands, and everything will be fine in the world.”

Seonghwa chokes, “What’s that supposed to mean? I was employed for my—”

“Save it,” she gives him a look, “I have a feeling you’re acting obtuse on purpose.”

“There’s nothing to act obtuse about,” Seonghwa argues. “I’m here—”

“Blah, blah, because Yeosang’s mother employed me, blah, blah,” she mocks. “Try thinking with your head once—where _is_ his mother? Why would a parent leave their child alone in a fucking mansion, Seonghwa?”

“What are you saying?” Seonghwa questions angrily like a match catching aflame. “That he—he… What? _Lured_ me here?” The word falls incredulously from his mouth.

“Wasn’t it all too good to be true?” Soyeon asks, crossing her arms over her chest. “He did it to all of us, but we ended up staying. We all caught on faster than you did, though.”

Something breaks then, deep down inside him, and it all starts making a lot more sense. The fact that he’s never met Yeosang’s mother—it could’ve been anyone on the phone, even Soyeon now that he thinks about it—and the fact that Seonghwa never really had a formal job position. Everything was muddy from the start, but he ignored it. Blindly trusting the lonely, mistreated boy. 

“You must make a choice,” she says, and leaves him to it.

* * *

Seonghwa is trapped. 

The house has no doors, no windows, no light; just hallways that go on forever. He’s exhausted, walking in circles to find something that is not there.

All the lights turn on at once, and there he stands—in front of the first door he’s seeing since he… 

All thoughts suddenly lose meaning, Yeosang is extending a hand, his finger clutching a key. And Seonghwa thinks, _Ah, ah, ah there it is, finally_. 

He takes the hand, the key, the boy; lets himself be led away into the light beyond, blinding, unlike anything he’s ever seen.

* * *

And as far as stories go, this one is Seonghwa's favorite:

There once was a prince, all alone in his dark red castle. He had no friends to keep him company, no family to speak of, only himself and the reflection in the mirror.

"Give me something, I'm bored," he bemoaned at the mirror; and the mirror gave him books. Hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands. It gave him the knowledge he needed to keep himself occupied, but one book became another, and soon he had read them all.

"Give me something, I'm bored," the prince bemoaned at the mirror again, and the mirror showed him his true self. Another boy, as tall as the mirror itself watched the prince from within. His crooked crown, the scars climbing up his leg like vines.

"I give to you myself," the boy in the mirror said, "Use me however you wish."

And he took the boy's hand and found him regretfully stuck inside, forever bound to look at each other from the outside. 

Until the prince broke the mirror in a fit of rage, shards flying all over the floor like stars, and they were finally together, irrevocably bound, and safe in each other’s arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Castle in the Air](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959102) by [keyisSHINyou (sangiebyheart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangiebyheart/pseuds/keyisSHINyou)




End file.
